Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.

Brilliant as the victories had been, Napier had to face criticism from enemies and friends alike. The new English humor magazine, Punch, barely a year old, published a cartoon of Napier striding through the carnage of the battlefield with the caption "Peccavi" — "I have sinned", as indeed he had. [2]